PrairiePundit

Houston Chronicle: ... Perry quickly telephoned Pawlenty, who put together a strong Iowa campaign organization but failed to win the hearts of voters during his 12 weeks in the race. The Texas governor told reporters that he would seek the endorsement of a man he called a good friend and fellow jokester. “He is one of my favorite governors out there, not only because of what a Republican governor did in a pretty blue state, but also in a personal way,” Perry told reporters in New Hampshire before flying to Iowa. “He is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever been around in my life and I just love him.” Perry said the two men often “joke and poke each other.” He said he told Pawlenty on Sunday, “’Daggonit… I was looking forward to getting out there and jousting with you.’ “He said, ‘Yeah, and I would have kicked your tail, too.’” ... I suspect these guys could work together in the future. Perry might also be able to pick up some of Pawlenty's supporters around the country.

Fox News: Tim Pawlenty announced an end to his presidential candidacy Sunday after what he called a "disappointing" third place finish in the Ames, Iowa, straw poll. The former Minnesota governor said he had hoped to get some lift from the preference poll that is an early indicator of a candidate's potential strength in the primary season. "I'm ending my campaign for president," Pawlenty told ABC's "This Week," noting that he wished the scenario had been different but voters were looking for something else. ... I suspect the field will be down to three soon, Perry Romney and Bachmann.

Obama continues to provide material for GOP ads.

Des Moines Register-Tribune: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann sit atop the standings in the year’s first Des Moines Register Iowa Poll on the Republican presidential field. Romney, the national front-runner and a familiar face in Iowa after his 2008 presidential run, attracts support from 23 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers. Bachmann, who will officially kick off her campaign in Iowa on Monday, nearly matches him, with 22 percent. ... Cain was next at 10 percent. Pawlenty was in the single digits with the other candidates polled. Gov. Rick Perry was not in the survey. I suspect he is doing some internal polling to determine whether to get in the race. I would like to see what the race would look like with Perry included.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife I thought all of the participants did OK.  Michelle Bachmann sort of stood out, because the media had been so critical of her that she had a low bar, which she greatly exceeded.Some commentators have been critical of Pawlenty and Cain this go round, but I thought they did fine on the questions that really matter.  Some have argued that Cain has a problem with his response on selecting a Muslim for his cabinet, but no one else is picking one right now either including Obama.  It is not really an issue that is going to effect the outcome of this race. There will probably be more candidates joining the race over the next few months and some of these may fall away, but I think Bachmann help herself the most this evening. Related articles GOP Debate Recap (powerlineblog.com) Results of the New Hampshire GOP Debate (dakotavoice.com) Michele Bachmann Enters Presidential Race (time.com) Live coverage of the New Hampshire debate (p...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife The Hill: GOP White House contender Tim Pawlenty is ramping up his attacks on the National Labor Relations Board for its complaint against Boeing over the company’s decision to open a non-union airline production plant in South Carolina, allegedly retaliating against unionized workers in Washington state. “The NLRB decision and what they are saying to an American economy as to where and how they can do business is outrageous. This is not the Soviet Union circa 1970s or 1960s or ‘50s,” Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor, said on Fox News Friday. “The idea that we have a federal agency telling an American business in a supposedly free market that it can’t grow a business or start a business in another state is one of the most outrageous things I have seen,” Pawlenty said. ... I think there are going to be a lot of voters who agree with him. I am surprised there have been no polls on this subject. I am sure the right to work states opp...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife NY Times: ... Joan Silvernail, 68, pumped Mr. Cain’s hand, then turned to her husband. “It’s his enthusiasm,” she said. “Wasn’t that what we felt with Ronald Reagan, his enthusiasm?” Those not frequenting Tea Party rallies or the living rooms and coffee shops of New Hampshire and Iowa might dismiss Mr. Cain, a talk radio host and former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza, as a frivolous candidate — “the pizza guy” as some call him. But there are signs of what Mr. Cain, in his booming baritone, calls “Old Man Mo — Momentum!” A Gallup poll released last week showed Mr. Cain with the highest voter intensity score of any Republican presidential contender — far higher than Ms. Palin, a former governor of Alaska, or Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts. While Mr. Cain’s name recognition was at 37 percent, it had risen 16 points since March. Many pundits and voters declared him the winner of the first Republican debate last month. An...

Image by jeremyvaught via Flickr Washington Post: Will the White House get its favorite Republican candidate? Last October, top White House adviser David Plouffe told reporters of the 2012 GOP contest: “These guys are going to be running through hoops to please the far-right folks who are kind of the acolytes of Sarah Palin. Now maybe she’ll be running herself. Something tells me we won’t get that lucky.” He might be wrong. The former Alaska governor launches a tour of the Northeast this weekend in what could be the first sign of a presidential run. Palin may not win the Republican nomination even if she enters. But top Democrats believe her candidacy would help them even if she did not win, forcing the other Republicans to take more conservative positions than they would otherwise to compete with Palin among GOP activists. ... Of course, a Palin candidacy would not guarantee victory for Obama in 2012. In last year’s congressional elections, Democrats constantly spoke of h...

Image via Wikipedia Washington Post: ... On Wednesday, Pawlenty made a direct appeal to a gathering of conservatives in downtown Washington, pledging to place a temporary freeze on public employee salaries and to cut one in two federal jobs through attrition. The venue, the libertarian Cato Institute , was rich with the symbolism of what Pawlenty was hoping to do: fill the free-enterprise space that many Republicans had hoped Daniels or Christie would step into — and demonstrate that he was up to the task. “We can’t have federal employees getting a better deal than the people paying the bill — and that’s the taxpayer,” Pawlenty said at the third stop of a week-long swing across the country that began Monday with the official kickoff of his presidential campaign. It has been a week of symbolic backdrops. In Iowa,where the ethanol lobby has held an iron grip on political discourse, Pawlenty promised to end ethanol subsidies. In Florida, where politicians historically have court...

Cover of Going Rogue: An American Life Jay Costs: ... Today, I want to look at things strictly from the competitiveness metric, and here I think the main contenders -- Jon Huntsman, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitt Romney -- all score very, very well. I see four reasons for drawing this conclusion. 1. Crossover appeal . Huntsman, Pawlenty, and Romney all won statewide elections by performing better than the party normally does in each state. In 2008 Jon Huntsman won 64 percent of the gubernatorial vote in Utah (an improvement on his performance relative to 2004), while John McCain won 62 percent of the presidential vote that same year. Tim Pawlenty won reelection in Minnesota in 2006 narrowly, but this was still an impressive feat considering that Minnesota retains a blue tilt and 2006 was a terrible year for Republicans in general. T-Paw won about 100,000 more votes that the Republican candidates in the 8 Minnesota House districts that year, and 200,000 more votes than Mark Kenne...

Image via Wikipedia Tim Pawlenty: In the third year of Barack Obama's presidency, unemployment is at unbearable levels, gas and food prices are skyrocketing and federal government spending is out of control. "ObamaCare" is unconstitutional, and it is already driving up health costs — not reducing them. The president's policies simply aren't working. And more than that, he won't even tell us the truth about the problems we're facing and what it's really going to take to get America back on the right track. In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes a variety of opinions from outside writers. On political and policy matters, we publish opinions from across the political spectrum. Roughly half of our columns come from our Board of Contributors, a group whose interests range from education to religion to sports to the economy. Their charge is to chronicle American culture by telling the stories, large and small, that collectively make us ...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife Herman Cain changed the minds over half the voters in the focus group at the Fox debate.  It may give him a boost against other candidates who skipped the event.  I thought Pawlenty did pretty well and Santorum exceeded by expectations which admittedly were not that high.  I am not that into the strong libertarian politics of Paul or Johnson. I have heard Cain before and think he is an intelligent guy, but I thought his lack of government service might be a problem.  It was not tonight. Erick Erickson   also think Pawlenty and Santorum showed well. Related articles Pawlenty's Night? (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)

Image via Wikipedia Dan Balz: ... Four years ago, Romney was setting a frenetic pace. Then, as a little-known candidate, he was scurrying from state to state, running television ads in Iowa and New Hampshire, and doing everything he could to prove he deserved to be in the same league as the likes of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. This year, he runs as if he couldn’t care less what others are doing. He has chosen the issues on which he wants to speak — mostly the economy and national security — rather than feeling the need to respond to the cable catnip of the day. Four years ago his team wanted to win every news cycle. This year they operate with seeming indifference to whatever may be trending politically on Twitter. Romney has managed to avoid engaging his rivals, meaning he can concentrate his fire on the president. “They haven’t been forced out into the open yet, which I think is unexpected and remarkable,” said Fergus Cullen, a former New...

Image via Wikipedia NY Times: Republican leaders, activists and donors, anxious that the party’s initial presidential field could squander a chance to capture grass-roots energy and build a strong case against President Obama at the outset of the 2012 race, are stepping up appeals for additional candidates to jump in, starting with Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana. “I’m getting letters from all over the damn country, and some of them are pretty moving,” Mr. Daniels said in an interview last week at the Capitol in Indianapolis, where his friends believe he is inching closer to exploring a candidacy. He added, “It can’t help but affect you.” The first contests of the primary are about eight months away, and most of the candidates have yet to fully open their campaigns. But some party leaders worry that Republicans are making a bad first impression by appearing tentative about their prospects against Mr. Obama and allowing Donald J. Trump to grab headlines in the news vacuum of the ra...

Pawlenty has produced some good ads so far.  He is good in the YouTube format.  Time will tell how he plays on the campaign trail Related articles Pawlenty uses own video to respond to Obama (boston.com) Social media let candidates bypass traditional media (boston.com) Romney uses Twitter to tweak Obama announcement (boston.com)

Image via Wikipedia Toby Harnden: Washington is the city of conventional wisdom. Denizens of the District of Columbia cling to a prevailing notion for dear life even when all evidence begins to point in another direction. Then, quick as a flash, the mood shifts and another idea takes hold. So it has been with President Barack Obama and his 2012 re-election chances. Back in November, when his party was on the receiving end of the worst electoral pummelling since 1948, Obama was a dead cert one-term president, a Jimmy Carter with bells on heading for oblivion. A compromise tax deal, the ratification of an arms treaty and the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell gay ban in the military later and Obama was once more a colossus sitting astride the American body politic mocking those idiot Republicans queuing up to lose in 2012. Despite Obama’s halting ambivalence over what to do with Libya, the continued unpopularity of his signature healthcare reform and an ailing economy, the Washi...

Image via Wikipedia NY Times: ... It is an uncertain gambit for Mr. Pawlenty, who rose through the ranks of state politics over nearly two decades and now faces the tumult of a Republican presidential primary in which the path to the nomination is far from clear. And seeking to keep a foot in all Republican camps, rather than concentrating on a more targeted slice of voters, could leave the impression that he is trying too hard. His record as a fiscally conservative governor in a politically divided state is solid, but he still faces stiff competition winning over Tea Party supporters. An evangelical Christian, Mr. Pawlenty has yet to build a loyal following among religious conservatives. He lacks a deep fund-raising network and his name recognition is low, but he was among the finalists Senator John McCain was considering for his running mate in 2008. Yet in a prospective field whose most prominent members have some heavy baggage as well as higher profiles, one of Mr. Pawlenty...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife Washington Times: exas Gov. Rick Perry on Friday gave more than 2,000 cheering conservative activists a dose of Texas -style sparkle and wit, making fun of liberal’s excesses and pronouncing America’s future bright. His optimistic view contrasted with the darker one Donald Trump showed the equally appreciative audience the day before, when he claimed the world is laughing at the United States and its defeatist foreign policy and namby-pamby approach to the foreign oil cartel. Emphasizing his Texas drawl and at times gesturing in ways reminiscent of his predecessor as governor, former President George W. Bush, Mr. Perry gave one of the liveliest and best received speeches, many activists said on the second day of the 38th annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. ... Gov. Tim Pawlenty also up his game with a new zinger aimed at the President, “President Obama has succeeded in doing the impossible. He’s proven that someb...

Image via Wikipedia Politico: Pawlenty is working hard to court evangelical Christian voters. A devout evangelical himself, Pawlenty made three stops around Iowa Monday in an effort to win over the influential voting bloc that helped put Ronald Reagan in the White House and later gave George W. Bush two terms. Continue Reading "It's important that we acknowledge and begin with the notion that this was a country and is a country that is founded under God," he declared on the final stop on the Family Leader lecture series at Dordt College in Sioux City. "This not the rhetoric of a politician passing through town. This is a foundational concept for our nation." But Pawlenty, who was the first would-be 2012 candidate to address the social conservative advocacy group, is just one of several prospective Republican presidential candidates vying for evangelicals' support. The Family Leader announced Monday that Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president in ...

It seems a little over the top for a mild mannered candidate, but maybe this is who he really is.